Katie

Katie Louise Ann Ebert is the princess of our household. All dogs and cats (and even humans for the most part) cow down to her wishes. If another dog has the bone that she wants, she will just stand over them and tell them why she should have it (she actually "talks", instead of barking), then she takes it without them arguing about it. It's really funny. She does the same thing if they're in the bed that she wants to lay in. She will talk to them until they give in and move to another bed. She's not mean, she's just demanding. :-)

Katie spent the first couple of months of her life in the wild. She had to hunt wild animals for food. The reason we believe this is because for the first year of being our daughter, every weekend when we'd take all the dogs to the lake to run, swim and play, she would spend the whole entire time hunting. Every single time, she would catch at least one huge field mouse. Because she was no longer starving, she never ate what she caught. But she would prance around with it in her mouth until everyone had seen her and congratulated her. Then she'd put it down and go back to hunting until it was time to leave.

Katie is the only dog that we can't take outside of the fence without a leash. As a puppy we tried to teach her to stay on our property, but instead of taking the lead of Pickles and Al, she would always run across the street to my in-laws house. She would first go to their front door and scratch. But if nobody answered before we started getting close to her, she's run around to their back door and scratch. At that time, they'd either open the door to let her in or we'd catch up to her and have to drag her back home. Even now, being a grown dog, we can't trust her off the leash.

Katie is a very sweet and loving dog though, and she loves kids. Now that's she's older she doesn't play with kids as much as she use to, but she loves to be hugged and she freely gives tons of kisses!

Al

Al is a black lab mix and he's 14 years old. I'm afraid that this might be Al's last year, but who knows, I hope he surprises us! He's almost completely blind, he doesn't eat much (Al's favorite thing in the world has always been food, so it's a bit disconcerting), he's lost some weight, and he can't get around very well.

It's hard to know when it's time to put a dog to sleep (I've only had to do it once in my life with Pickles, and it was one of the worst things I've ever gone through). He doesn't seem to be in any pain, he still gets excited for his treats and if we take him to the lake he will run and swim (although he'll be in pain later and have to take a painkiller, which is why we don't go to the lake very often any more. We use to go every single weekend.). So, I know he's not ready yet. It makes me sad to see him like this, but he still has such a great attitude and is so loving.

Al loves his 3 siblings and they love him. He has no desire to play the "chain of command" game, so he's no threat to the other 3 kids. He can't really play with them much any more, but every once and awhile he'll try to play a little bit. Here's a video of the three other kids playing in the snow (if I uploaded it correctly) and you can see how Al got in there just a little bit. Unfortunately he can't run, jump and wrestle any more, but you can see that he'd like to.

Pickles

Another picture of Pickles when she was peacefully asleep in her bed. Isn't she beautiful?!

Pickles - RIP

Pickles died at the age of 12 years old. She had a great life and I think she was ready to go, but I had a very tough time letting her go. She died in January of 2008, and I still miss her terribly.

I rescued Pickles when she was just a little puppy. She was picked on by the owner's other dogs all the time and they wouldn't even let her eat. She was so skinny, and I felt so sorry for her, so the owners agreed to let me give her a new home. Since they had already named her, I left her as "Pickles". Her mom looked like she was part basset hound, but Pickles and her mother's only other puppy both looked more like dalmatians.

Pickles was a such a delightful little daughter and so easily trained. She was an only child for a little less than a year when I got Pepper, but she never minded being an only child. She was always happy and loved to please people.

I have such wonderful memories of her and she will always live in my heart.

First Blog

This is my first blog ever. My name is Amy, I'm 39 years old and I live in rural North East Texas. Since I love dogs more than anything in the world, it was only natural for me to do a blog about dogs. I am married to Bryan and we have 4 canine children. I can't have human children, so my dogs are my children. And as far as they are concerned, they are human.

My oldest child is Al, who is a 14 year old black lab mix. My husband adopted Al before we got together. He wandered up to Bryan's house when he was about 4 months old and Bryan took him in. He's very gentle and even though he is the oldest, he's the low man on the totem pole. He has no desire for dominance and pretty much just goes with the flow. When Al was younger, he use to love to go dove hunting. He still enjoys going out to the lake and swimming. He will retrieve sticks and toys that we throw into the lake until he's tired and then he will leave the item in the water about 3 or 4 feet away from land so that we can't get it. When he's ready to play again, he will go back into the water, retrieve the item and return it to us. LOL

My next to oldest child is Katie, who is a 9 year old German Shepherd mix. One day, while taking the long way home in the middle of the country, my husband and I saw a bone thin pup scrounging in the ditch looking for food. We turned the car around and she got in the center of the road (right on the yellow stripe) and started running from us. She pulled over at an abandoned house, turned around to face our car and just sat down to watch us. I got out of the car and talked calmly to her as I slowly approached her. When I was about 6 or 7 feet from her, I squatted down and she began talking to me. Yes, Katie "talks" instead of "barks". She told me her whole story and when I said "Well, come here then" and held out my arms to her, she ran to me and climbed up in my lap. As soon as she walked into our house she took over and everyone treated her like a princess. After 9 years, she is still the most dominant dog and is still considered the princess.

My youngest son is Billy, who is 8 years old and a total mutt - even his vet doesn't know what he is. He is the apple of my eye. Our friends and family claim that Billy and I both don't realize that I didn't actually give birth to him. LOL! We rescued Billy from the local pound (at that time there weren't any no-kill shelters in our area). When we got Katie, we had Al and Pickles (Pickles died of old age two years ago this past January - I still miss her terribly) and Katie was driving them insane with all her energy. Bryan and I went to the pound to find her a play mate and there was a whole litter of black and white puppies. All but one of the puppies were up at the gate jumping up and begging for attention. But there was one little pup who was cowering in the back corner, shaking and terrified. As soon as my eyes met his, I knew he was meant to be my baby. He's still scared of most people, but he loves his parents and siblings fiercely! :-)

The baby of the family is Pearl, who is 2 years old this month and is part Red Bone Coon Hound (as far as we can tell). Not too far from where we found Katie, Bryan saw 3 puppies that had been dumped on the side of the road. They were about 4 weeks old, so he scooped them up and brought them home. Before he even got home I had found homes for each of them. We had no idea how young they were, so we thought they were dachshunds. Since this was a Friday, they were scheduled to go to their new homes the following Monday. But by Sunday we could tell one of the pups was very ill. We took her to the vet first thing Monday morning and found out that she had parvo. She spent a whole week in the hospital and barely pulled through it. Our vet, being the wonderful man that he is, didn't charge us full price since he knew this was a stray that we had just picked up, but it still ended up costing us over $600, so we ended up keeping her and naming her Pearl (due to the one white paw she has). Pearl has won the hearts of every person and dog that she has met! Oh, and we realized that she wasn't a dachshund when she got up to a whopping 55 pounds! LOL

This is just an introduction to our family, and I plan on telling each kids' story on separate pages. I think they're each so wonderful, that they deserve their own little spot light. :-)